South America articles

I took a Panama Canal cruise on the Norwegian Sun, departing Miami April 12, ’03, and arriving in Los Angeles April 29. The ship line provided an e-mail address where we could be contacted aboard ship. I gave this to family members so they could reach us if they had to.
ITN asked its readers for essays centered on the subject “Travel is. . .” in 250 words or less. Small prizes were offered for the best five.
Back in 1996 on a freighter trip down the Pacific coast, the captain of the MV Widukind took five of us passengers ashore at Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica, to while the day away as the ship was being loaded and unloaded.
We took a 55-day voyage around South America, February-April ’03. We’d taken a similar trip 10 years before on an old, slow, former Matson ship, but we were ready to do it again.
Just as our July ’03 issue arrived with Randy Keck’s article on Transylvania (Romania), we were about to leave on a self-planned trip covering the same sites. These are our observations, to augment his.